Youth Farms

Serving as a vehicle for youth education and development, the Youth Farm at Hilltop Urban Farm will engage school-aged children from the Hilltop communities with food production and teamwork. Partnering with the Pittsburgh Arlington School (adjacent to the site) and Lighthouse Central – a pillar of local community youth service – the Youth Farm acts as a living agricultural and ecological laboratory for children. It promotes the teaching of Nutrition & Cooking, Growing Food, Local Food Systems, Agriculture as a Career Pathway, and Ecology of Western Pennsylvania through the lens of urban farming with the support of program partners Penn State Extension, Allegheny Land Trust Education Department, and Grow Pittsburgh.

All elements of the Youth Farm are visually appealing, colorful, child-friendly and scaled to size. Children can expect to learn, play and interact among raised bed growing areas, youth gardens, a youth orchard and a youth food forest.

The Youth Farm at Hilltop Urban Farm is under construction in the summer of 2018. The first season of on-site youth programming will begin in April 2019.

"We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture."

- Wendell Berry

Farmer Incubation Program

Open to anyone age 18 and over, the Farmer Incubation Program will train adults who are eager to gain hands-on experience growing their own farm enterprise. In exchange for an annual program fee participants will have access to ¼ acre of restored farmland, storage, solar panels, mobile coolers, a shared tool library, greenhouses, hoop houses – structures that use the solar rays to warm plants, allowing farmers to extend the growing season. Taught by a consortium of Hilltop Urban Farm program managers, educators from the Pennsylvania State University and more, the program provides training in production, management, and marketing of an urban farm. Entrepreneurial in spirit, the Farmer Incubation Program is the first of its kind in the United States, and equips graduates with the tools to own and operate their own, independent farms after three years.

The Farmer Incubation Program at Hilltop Urban Farm will be constructed in the summer of 2019. A competitive application process for applicants will begin in August 2019. The first round of urban farmers will begin the Farmer Incubation Program in January 2020.

Farmers Market

The Farmers’ Market will open its inaugural season in May 2020. The market will operate annually from May to October.

Providing easy access to fresh food is the goal of our Farmers’ Market. In addition to traditional payment methods, we also will accept Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) vouchers. Our Farmers’ Market operates in two ways: as a monthly on-site event and as a mobile market that brings fresh produce to public locations within the Hilltop neighborhoods. With the use of a mobile cooler system, our market on wheels is designed to transport food from Hilltop Urban Farm to the communities we serve.